Quicken Essentials for Mac price drops amid user complaints

For many users, Quicken Essentials for Mac missed the mark with respect to …

When Intuit announced Quicken Essentials for Mac—the first Mac product update in four years—the company faced wide consumer criticism for both its price and a long list of missing features. It seems that Intuit has heard your cries loud and clear: the company is officially dropping the price $20 and plans to roll out several new feature additions over the next few months.

Quicken Essentials for Mac was built to address the needs of the majority of personal finance software users, and included features for tracking accounts, monitoring spending, and creating budgets to curb that spending. However, Mac users waited four years for an update to Quicken for Mac 2007, which had long lacked features available to Windows users, and QEM was not going to cut it for many of them. The app lacked several features that the older Quicken for Mac had, such as online bill pay. To make matters worse, QEM originally sold for $69.99—the same price as the old Mac version, and $10 more than the feature-rich Quicken Deluxe for Windows.

"We've been in touch with the feedback from users after the launch, and we understand that many users felt that the new product didn't meet price/value expectations," Quicken product manager Eddy Wu told Ars.

In response to that feedback, Intuit is dropping the price of QEM to $49.99 beginning immediately. Users that paid the original $69.99 price won't get stiffed either—you can request a $20 refund online.

Intuit has also heard the complaints about missing features. "One of the ways we are addressing this issue is a series of updates that are coming soon which will add some of the oft-requested features," Wu said.

In an update that should be available by the end of this month, QEM users will be able to add password protection to their data files. "Our original assumption was that users would rely on separate user accounts to protect Quicken data, but a separate password to protect the data was widely requested," Wu told Ars. Users will also be able to export transaction data to spreadsheet format for additional analysis if they like.

Later this summer, other updates will add the ability to enter investment data from brokerages that don't use Quicken's data format. Users will also be able to compare spending between different time periods as well as track budgets across several months. And, users will be able to export tax-related expense data for use in tax software, including Intuit's own TurboTax (this missing feature was a surprise to many Ars readers).

"We think that both the price change and feature additions will address the issues we have heard from users," Wu said.

On top of these free updates for existing QEM users, Intuit is also examining the top requested features for inclusion in a future version of QEM. While Wu couldn't say when or what features would be in the 2.0 version, he told Ars that online bill pay, check printing, and advanced investment tracking were the top requested features being considered.

Still, Quicken Essentials for Mac will remain an entry-level product for users with relatively simple financial management needs, Wu said. "We have [an] ongoing development effort to address more advanced needs. The plan is to develop a separate product that will meet those needs, and have feature parity with Quicken Deluxe on Windows."

Intuit has set up a form to send the Quicken Mac team additional feedback, and according to Wu, the team is listening.